INTRODUCTION
Man is both a rational and a social being. His identity and personality is molded and shaped in his experience of his environment. It is this experiential difference of peoples within their social environment that distinguishes them from others. This is termed as people’s world view.
The history of philosophy is explete with the history of the development of mans thought of himself and of his environment. History and philosophy are closely linked and complements each other. While history provides philosophy with the raw materials to work on, philosophy in turn synthesizes and analyses history critically to give it meaning and significance.
In this work we shall attempt to expose philosophy and the art of thinking, using the Ijaw people as a case of study. We shall overviewed philosophy in its broad sense. We shall look at the nature and sources of Ijaw philosophy and the Ijaw traditional moral philosophy. Then we shall draw evaluation and conclusion.
Methodology: Methodology, we shall adopt the approach of a reflective universal history. Although in this approach I am required to present the philosophy of the Ijaw people (my people), I will be working within the limited space. Hence the main thing we shall engage in this, is the elaboration of the historical material available.

PHILOSOPHY IN THE BROAD STRICT SENSE
The principle of philosophy rest on purely rational foundation and rationality is fundamental to all men in every place and in every age. Everywhere in the world men reflect on such basic questions about the human person and about the physical universe. However, philosophy in the strict sense is both a process and a product. It involves the process of analysis, clarification, criticism and evaluation and its product is directing the human life along the right course.
There are so many different philosophers. According to Omoregbe a philosophers in the strict sense is one who frequently and habitually reflect on the fundamental questions of human life existence.

SOME IJAW (IZON) IDENTITY/GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION
The Ijaw (also known as the “Izon”) are a collection of peoples residing mostly in the forest regions of the Niger River Delta in Nigeria, and numbering several million individuals. The Ijaw speaks 9 closely-related Niger-Congo languages, all of which fall under the Ijoid branch of the Niger-Congo tree. The primary division between the Ijo and western Ijo, the most important of the former group of languages being Izon, which is spoken by about 1 million people, while the most prominent member of the western Ijo group is Kalabari, which has about a quarter of a million speakers. Formerly organized into several loose clusters of villages which cooperated to defend themselves against outsiders, the Ijaw increasingly view themselves as belonging to a single coherent nation, bound together by ties of language and culture. This tendency has been encouraged in large part by the environmental degradations that have accompanied the discovery of oil in the Niger-Delta region which the Ijaw call home, as well as by a revenue. Sharing formula with the Federal Government that is viewed by the Ijaw as manifestly unfair.

NATURE AND SOURCE OF IJAW PHILOSOPHY
The Ijaw had complex social and religious institutions which were not mechanically and irrationally devised institution, before the influence of the western civilization. These institution were rather the result of reflective responses to their problems and to the world around them. Primitive man was no less intelligent that modern man. He was just as capable of logical thinking and of reasoning in abstractions as is the American or English man of the twenty first century, he thinks differently, in many respects, from his modern descendants, because of his more limited experience and interests, but the fundamental traits of his mind are the same.
Reflecting on this I was convinced that although the western system was more systematic than the African, nevertheless African philosophy was practical in the sense that people did not waste time on logic and frivolous arguments. Their philosophy was more pragmatic in that it was related to the pragmatic problems of every day life which they solved by adapting themselves to the logic of reason and experience. It has to do with all areas of human life experience which was classify as religion, ethics politics, speculative philosophy and art which include poetry music, drama, and sculpture.

FEATURES OF IJAW PHILOSOPHY
The feature of Ijaw philosophy include religion and religiousity, art, mariage and family, elders and ancestors, age-grade, land, prospects and ownership, egalitarian social values, women celebration and joy etc we shall briefly elaborate on these.

RELIGION AND CULTURAL PRACTICES
Although the Ijaw are now primarily Christians, with Catholicism being the variety of Christianity most prevalent amongst them, the Ijaw have elaborate religion, while water spirit, known as Owuamapu figure prominently in the Ijaw pantheon. In addition, the Ijaw practice a form of divination called Igbadai, in which recently deceased individuals are interrogated on the causes of their death.
Ijaw religious beliefs hold that water spirit are like humans in having personal strengths and shortcomings, and that humans dwell amongst the water spirits before being born. The role of prayer in the traditional Ijaw system of belief is to maintain the living in the good graces of the water spirits amongst whom they dwelt before being born into this world, and each year the Ijaw hold celebrations in honor the spirits lasting for several days. Centrl to the festivities is the role of masquarades, in which men wearing elaborate outfits and carved masks dance to the beat of drums and manifest the influence of the water spirits through the quality and intensity of their dancing particularly spectacular masquarades are taken to actually be in the possession of the particular spirits on whose behalf they are dancing.

WHAT I HAVE GAINED FROM THE STUDY OF THE COURSE
Haven done philosophy for a whole semester, I have been privileged to learn ewthics which is the moral behaviour of people. Metaphysics, that is the metaphysical way of mans reflection and reasoning. Epistemology which the ability to read, learn and understanding of knowledge of things around us.
Logic which is the way of using reasoning and questioning to seek answers to noble of our society.

EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
What was discussed so far on the history, philosophy and art of thinking of the Ijaw is just a trip of an ice-berg on this subject as a result of the limited space permitted. However, looking at our contemporary Ijaw society, there is no doubt that things have falling apart. There is the disjunction between traditional culture and the demands of modern life. Although the western civilization have undoubtedly brought about many positive changes, the idea of loosing completely our orignality while at the same time not succeeding to become exactly like the westerns in social intellectual and economic development leaves much to be desired not only the Ijaw but Africa in general.
Hence inculturation and accuration cannot be avoided. Let us then look at new heights of creative effort whereby we can sieve out those structures that remain the basis for immutable values of morality and goodness and complement them with other areas of human development that can be gained as a result of global interdependent.
Studying philosophy in school will help us to reason and maintain our stand in decision making and development of Nigeria and the world at large.

REFERENCE
Joseph Omoregbe, Knowing Philosophy, Joja Educational Research and Publishers Limited, Ikorodu Road, Maryland, Lagos-Nigeria 1990.
Chief Benibai of Izon-Oborotu Community
Elder Mr. Peter Numa of Ofeniben-ama Community

                                                                                                      By: Suowari Paulinus Gesi-owei